Laura and I successfully made it from the East coast to Colorado with only a couple false alarms regarding car trouble (I was convinced I had a flat tire, Laura was convinced her gas tank was leaking, my check engine light went on - turns out it was all nothing). We left Wednesday morning, June 16th and spent the night at an extremely buggy campsite run by a very friendly family. On Thursday, after driving for 12 hours the second day in a row, we were planning on camping again, except after hearing warnings of tornadoes and floods and certain severe thunderstorms, I decided it might be wise to take up my dad on his offer of a motel room. We stayed in a Holiday Inn Express in Lincoln, NE and watched the sky change colors as the storm rolled in (we weren't lucky enough to get a tornado, however).
Friday afternoon we made it to Denver and I followed directions on my iPhone around the city to a new (to me) kayak and mountain bike. Friday night we were crashing at Greg's friend's house in Boulder and were headed there when we ran into two kayak bums on the side of the road. They looked pretty cute and we could tell they were definitely sweet dudes cause they weren't wearing any shirts so we decided to stop and ended up joining them for a makeshift dinner party by our cars.
Saturday we headed down to FIBArk and got there in time to see the Hooligan race: only qualification for entry is that your craft can NOT be a boat. Some people got quite creative. There were a couple of crafts that looked a lot like Max F's inflatable pool. My favorite was the giant PBR 6-pack. We saw it the next day when we ran a section of the Arkansas a number of miles down stream pinned against a rock and with only 5 "beers" remaining. Sunday, after an epic road trip, we finally parted ways.
Monday was my first full day on the ranch. There was one other student already here, Harry, who is just graduated from St Michael's in VT (thats a college not a hs). Joey (Tri-kap #1) showed up on Wednesday and John (Tri-kap #2) and his friend from Hamilton, Chase, arrived on Thursday. They all seem pretty chill, but I haven't gotten to know them that well yet. Partly, because I am completely segregated from the male species. As I'm sure Kate and Ben will recall, the boys are put in the "Hodge Podge Lodge" a mile down the road from the ranch and I, being a female, am in a cabin right on the ranch. Also, as Kate and Ben experienced, the work is completely divided by sexes. Boys use weed-whackers and cut wood, girls
clean cabins. (I'm the only female "student", but I work with Emily, the ranch manager's 16 year old daughter, who I actually have a lot of respect for. She reminds me a of a much cooler version of me when I was that age. And she got in a fight her freshman year of high school, which is something I would never have the balls to do.) I was rereading Kate's old post when she talked about how Ben cleaned windows only if they were on the 2nd story. Well, apparently, Mary, the office manager, had been trying to get the men on the ranch to do someth
ing about the second story windows, and finally they gave us a couple of the boys to help. Turns out that they weren't that much of a help, and Emily ended up climbing up the steep ladder to clean most of the high up windows. As Kate mentioned, despite the fact that I might have more experience than some of the boys or might be more qualified to do some of their jobs or simply just might be better at their doing their job, the fact that I have a second X chromosome means I'm relegated to watering flowers, sweeping floors, and ironing table clothes.
I'll see how it goes. I have faith that it might get better. This was just the first week when everything needed to get organized. Charles (the owner, Charles Nearburg... heard stories? I've gotten to see some of his toys including his plane, his supped up Jeep with "Cowboy Thunder" painted on the side, and the outline of his Ferrari through its fitted cover) arrived the other day. There are number of old ranch hands that will be arriving in the next couple of days for a reunion. And guests will start arriving in the next week or so. I've heard that Charles generally has projects for the students (something about making a fence), which I hope means that I can work along side the boys. To be honest, the work isn't that great, but it is sort of what I was expecting. It really isn't bad. You do your work, you get paid, and you go have fun.
And speaking of fun. I had a great time this past weekend. Realizing that it was the only time I was guaranteed to have a full weekend off, I hopped in my car Saturday morning and headed to Crested Butte, where both Laura and Erin Larson are working. After a beautiful drive I arrived in CB around noon, found Laura, and shortly thereafter we met up with Erin. We tried mountain biking on Saturday, but to due to time constraints we didn't get that far, but did bike up the huge hill in CB. Saturday night Laura and I met up with Erin and some of her friends to head out for a night hike. The plan was to summit Red Rock. The path started going up hill, then traversed for awhile, and then up a little more, and then turned and started going down in the complete opposite direction of the mountain. So we eventually turned around with summitting, which was fine by me because it meant we got back to our car before midnight and I was pooped by then. Sunday we got out mountain biking for real. After completing one trail we headed down a dirt road in search of the classic class V creek, Oh Be Joyful, with only a vague idea of where it was supposed to be. We found it eventually and it was increadible. Laura and I thought about running it but we only had playboats (kidding). We were about three hours early to watch the race on the creek, which would have been really cool to see but instead we headed back to town on a different trail and had well-deserved burritos for lunch at around 3 o'clock.
Thats more or less all for now. I'm bartending/serving tonight at the lodge for the reunion. I'm also desperate for some kayaking friends so today I went into the only rafting company in town to see if any of the guides happened to be kayakers. The answer was yes, all five of them are, but there isn't really any whitewater in the area. (The single run close by is already too low.) The guy working there gave me his contact info, however, and a trip to Durango or Salida or BV might work out. And I guess I have to be honest and say... I still don't think its fair that I don't get to do the same work as boys at the ranch, but sexism does work both ways and I wouldn't be surprised if the guide was more willing to work out a kayaking trip because I was a lady boater.
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